Pigskin Dispatch Podcast’s Darin Hayes and I discuss the dumbest NFL draft picks ever, courtesy of the Washington Redskins, who managed to make terrible first round picks two years in a row.

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• Section I - Rules Used As Definitions

• Section II: Rules Preliminary to the Game

The third section, concerning Rules Bearing Directly on the Play, covers the game’s rules on tackling, snapping, out-of-bounds, fair catches, and the like, so it covers the meat of the game. It includes Rules 28 to 38, most of which are quite lengthy and some of which are convoluted.

Rule 28 lists unsportsmanlike behaviors that result in fouls. It barred hacking, or intentionally kicking an opponent in the shins, and throttling, or choking, and other self-explanatory fouls.

Rule 29 covers free kicks and kickoffs, which are a form of free kick. Everyone on the kicking team’s side must be behind the ball on a free kick, and the opposite side must stand at least ten yards behind the restraining line.

As mentioned in an earlier story, Rule 30 tells us it is illegal to throw or bat the ball forward, but the opposing team can fair catch balls sent forward if it is to their advantage.

We clearly are in the old days when tacklers yelled “Held” and ball carriers yelled “Down,” which were important procedures before the officials used whistles and horns. Rule 31 also requires that the player receiving the snap or fair (a toss onto the field from out of bounds) cannot run with the ball and must pass it to a teammate.

Balls went into touch (out of bounds) in 1884, so Rule 32 tells us the methods to get the ball back into play:

• Bound the ball onto the field and run with it

• Kick or throw it back to a teammate (who is behind the ball)

• Execute a fair by throwing the ball at a right angle to the touch line (similar to rugby today)

• Walk the ball 5 to 15 yards onto the field and set it down for a scrimmage

We covered maul-in in Section I, but Rule 33 tells us maul-ins were not free-for-alls. Only players touching the ball with their hands when the ball crossed the goal line could participate in the maul-in.

Rule 34 covers the procedures for kickouts, situations now covered by touchbacks. One of the few markings on early fields was the 25-yardline, which was there due to kickouts. As with kickoffs, the ball had to be kicked in bounds or result in a turnover.

Rule 35 seems to cover a lot of territory, but tells us when the defending team can charge, or rush, the kicker or punter. The ability to rush the placekicker when the ball touched the ground is why teams used the over-under holding technique.

Rule 36 defines what occurs on a fair catch and defines the restraining line based on where the fair catch was made.

A foul occurred when a player interfered with a fair catch by touching the fair catcher or waving one’s arms or hat to distract them. (Teams mostly wore stocking caps or short-brimmed hats at the time, leading to them whipping their caps near the receiver to distract them.) Rule 37 put an end to that practice.

Rule 38 essentially says you could not touch a player of the other side unless he had the ball. The game was in transition in 1884 as the practice of warding or interfering, what we now call blocking, began to emerge. The acceptance of blocking is surely one of the top several changes that have pushed football further out of rugby’s orbit.

Page 15 is the Index, which, besides being in an odd location in the rule book, is also organized in a way that baffles the modern mind.

We’ll cover the Duties of the Referee next and cover some of the Interpretation of Rules section as well.

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• Football’s 1884 Rule Book: Section I - Rules Used As Definitions

This article focuses on Section II: Rules Preliminary to the Game, which covers Rules 18-27 and defines the officiating, playing field, number of players, and other procedural elements, including the game’s scoring rules. As in the previous article, we’ll briefly examine the differences between the 1876 and 1884 rules and how they relate to the present.

Section II: Rules Preliminary to the Game

Rule 18 describes the game’s officials, two judges and a referee, with the 1884 edition adding the new requirement that the referee shall be an alumnus. The alumnus requirement was likely intended to ensure the referee was knowledgeable about the game.

The 1876 rules also provided for a referee and two judges, with the judges serving as advocates for the respective teams. By 1884, the judges were neutral assistants to the all-powerful referee.

Rule 19 outlines the game’s penalty structure for players who are off-side (Rule 17) or who commit various personal fouls (Rule 28). Football did not yet have distance penalties beyond returning the ball to the spot for certain fouls. Fouls led to turnovers, loss of a down, or player disqualification. Allowing players to commit three fouls before being disqualified was central to Harvard’s dispute with the IFA and to its faculty’s decision not to allow Harvard to play football in 1885. The referee also controls the clock during certain stoppages, rather than the running clock of 1876.

Rule 20 defined the playing field as 330 feet long (110 yards) by 160 feet wide (53⅓ yards), whereas the 1876 field was 140 yards long by 70 yards wide. The goalposts were also taller than required in 1876. The interpretation section, covered in a later article, includes the requirement:

The field should be marked with transverse lines every five yards.

The yard lines spaced five yards apart is not reflected in the playing field diagram despite that requirement being put in place in 1882.

Rule 21 states that each team has 11 players on the field. The game did not allow substitutions as we think of them today. The starters played the full game unless they were disqualified or injured.

Each game consisted of two 45-minute halves with a 10-minute intermission (Rule 22). The game is decided by the combined score of the two halves.

Rule 23 identifies legal and illegal player equipment, banning hard, sticky, or greasy substances, as well as rubber cleats on shoes.

Rule 24 covers the captains “tossing up” pre-game, which we know as the coin flip. The winner gets his choice of the goal or kicking off. At the time, the kicking team typically dribbled kicked -similar to soccer- and retained possession of the ball. Princeton introduced the V Trick in 1884, later leading to the Flying Wedge.

Rule 25 tells us a kickoff occurs at the start of each half and following each goal. The team that gave up the score kicked off, allowing them to keep the ball by dribble kicking. That logic became problematic in the 1890s when they eliminated the dribble kick and Flying Wedge by requiring kickoffs to travel at least 10 yards.

Rule 26 provides for a loss of down when fouls were deemed intentional.

The last rule in Section II, Rule 27, covers scoring. Football’s points-based scoring system debuted the previous year with touchdowns counting 2 points, goals from field counting 5, goals after touchdowns were 4, and safeties were 1 point.

The 1884 rules effectively switched the point values for touchdowns and goals after touchdown to emphasize the value of the touchdown rather than the kick that followed it. Safeties also doubled in point value.

The 1884 rule book also includes a score sheet on page 16, which appears to have been a referee’s aid. The top half of the sheet tracks the game’s timing, including the time the game began, the timeouts, and the corrected end of each half based on play stoppages. The section headers refer to the First Three-Quarters and Second Three-Quarters, which seems odd until you remember that each half lasted 45 minutes or three-quarters of an hour.

The bottom half of the page helps track the game’s scoring, and players warned for fouls. It appears that the referee or others scoring the game were to list the individuals who scored rather than tick marks.

Next up is Section III: Rules Bearing Directly on the Play, which covers the game’s rules on tackling, snapping, out-of-bounds, fair catches, and the like.

We’ll cover that section in the next day or two.

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The Library of Congress has since scanned the document and provided me with a PDF, which I will share in sections over the next few days. In each section, I’ll comment on the rules themselves and how they compare to the first rules of football, outlined in 1876. Football changed substantially in those nine years. Many of those changes are summarized nicely in the Substack Amator Ludis, though we still disagree on when football started. (He says 1883. I say 1876.)

As additional background, longtime readers may recall that I reviewed each of football’s 61 rules from 1876 in separate posts in 2022 and 2023. The link below takes you to the last article in the series, which includes links to all the articles.

Football’s 1876 versus 1884 Rule Books

We’ll cover the details as we go along, but the 1876 and 1884 rule books differ for several reasons. First, the 1876 rugby rules, which the IFA’s rule book copies nearly verbatim, were a disorganized mess. They read as if a committee brainstormed the rules, jotted them down in the order someone yelled them out, and did not bother organizing them.

American players struggled to understand this new game and worked to clarify and organize its rules. By 1884, their modified rules were organized in five sections, including:

• Section I: Rules Used As Definitions

• Section II: Rules Preliminary To The Game

• Section III: Rules Bearing Directly On The Play, plus a Field Diagram and Score Sheet

• Referee’s Duties

• Interpretation of Rules

Second, early football players sought greater specificity in the rules, so they added more detail to some of them and consolidated others, leaving only 38 rules. Third, American players changed rugby’s rules to reflect the style of play they preferred. The possession system (controlled scrimmage), the downs system, the points-based scoring system, and the early allowance of blocking were the primary changes.

Despite the improvements made from 1876 to 1884, modern readers will still see much archaic language and concepts that are no longer part of the modern game.

Section I: Rules Used As Definitions

Rules 1 and 2 show little change in concept between the rule books and are quite similar to today, while Rule 3 covers the kickout. Our current touchback procedures largely substitute for the kickout.

Rule 4 is a mishmash since it covers a player putting the ball on the ground:

• In the opponent’s goal, leading to a try at goal (a free kick)

• In his own goal, leading to a kickout

• In his own goal, leading to a safety

The safety as a distinct scoring act came in 1884. Before, it either did not play a role in scoring or it came in to play only under certain conditions.

Rules 5 to 7 are much the same concept as in 1876, though under different rules, and outline the process for kicking a goal after a touchdown or trying a puntout. Teams generally attempted the kick when they scored a touchdown near the center of the field, and opted for the puntout when scoring closer to the sideline because of the kick’s angle and distance. Puntouts disappeared from the game in the early 1920s.

Rule 8 covers the punt-on, which allowed a player making a fair catch on a puntout to punt it again, ideally to a teammate positioned in a more favorable position for a kick at goal, who might fair catch the ball. Teams could execute multiple punt-ons as needed.

Rule 9 describes how teams could score goals by any kick other than a punt. It also describes posters, which occurred then when the ball hit the post or crossbar, which we now call a “doink.”

Rule 10 defines the fair catch made from a kick, throw forward, or batted ball. The fair catch on a kick functions as it does today, whereas opponents throwing the ball forward or batting it, also called “knocking on,” was illegal. However, on first down or other circumstances, teams might gain an advantage by “intercepting” the thrown or batted ball via a fair catch, so it was part of the rules.

Rule 11 reflects the better-organized 1884 rule book, since the five conditions in which the ball is dead were spread across the 1876 rule book. Camp and others consolidated those conditions in one spot.

Rule 12 reflects a fundamental difference in the game compared to 1876. The scrimmage of 1876 focused on kicking the ball forward, as in rugby, while the 1884 rule reflects the adoption of the possession system in 1880, with play beginning either by kicking the ball forward or by snapping it back with the foot. The new scrimmage resulted in structured, pre-planned play rather than the free-flowing rugby game. As we will see in the interpretation section, the 1884 rules allowed the snapper to place his hand and foot on the ball. Though he could not pick up the ball, he could roll it back, eventually leading to snappers using only their hands and lifting the ball.

Rule 13 is little changed from 1876, though the defending team could no longer gain possession of the ball during the maul-in. Maul-ins disappeared in 1885. Today’s tush push is a very distant cousin of the maul-in.

Rule 14 defines the touch line (aka sideline) and tells us that the touch lines and goal lines are out of bounds and part of the goal, respectively. Other than terminology, the rule remains the same today.

Rules 15 and 16 cover the off-side rules, which were more involved in 1876 than in 1884 and in 1884 than today. The creation of the controlled scrimmage in 1880 simplified the off-side concept, though remnants of it remained until American football eliminated the onside punt/kick in the early 1920s.

Rule 17 limits a player to being off-side twice in a game, with the second offense being a disqualifier. The number of offenses allowed for off-side and other unsportsmanlike acts was central to Harvard and Princeton’s concerns about the game at the time. They wanted players removed for their first offense, not given multiple opportunities. This conflict eventually resulted in Harvard’s faculty barring their students from playing in 1885.

As will be discussed, the 1883 and 1884 seasons were important for selected rule changes, but more so for setting the stage for faculties and schools seeking to take control of intercollegiate athletics. More important than the rule changes were the beginnings of policies we took for granted for decades regarding who controls the game rules, eligibility standards, amateurism requirements, and like. We’ll cover some of this situation, the battle between Harvard and Yale, and related topics in the series summary.

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Pigskin Dispatch Podcast’s Darin Hayes and I discuss preseason training camps of the past, particularly those of the AAFC teams in 1946 and 1947. We focus on the tactics towns used to attract these training camps, including how Two Rivers, Wisconsin, stood the tallest of all.

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The impetus for this story came while reviewing the 1923-24 Goldsmith catalog, which included a page displaying an ankle protector.

The appearance of ankle protectors and braces was not unusual at the time. They appear in Spalding catalogs by 1905, and several versions are in the 1908 catalog, so they were nothing new in 1923. Still, seeing the item led me to ask when players started taping their ankles rather than using lace-up braces or supports.

The ancients understood the value of using zinc oxide in salves and bandages, and they saw its use in the 1890s to create plasters or bandages to treat certain injuries. Johnson & Johnson introduced their Zonas Adhesive Plasters in 1899, which saw a variety of applications for treating injuries.

The history of almost all football padding and gear shows that their initial use was among injured players before they were adopted to prevent injuries. With Johnson & Johnson’s Zonas Adhesive Plasters and similar products available by the turn of the century, surely some trainers used them to treat injured players’ pain and allow them to return to the field. Still, the record is bare until the mid-1910s.

The earliest references I find to ankle taping among athletes are from 1914, when Boston Braves shortstop Rabbit Maranville turned his ankle and resorted to ankle tape and cold-water soaking to continue playing. The same year, participants in a San Francisco road race were advised to tape their ankles to prevent sand from getting into their shoes and causing chafing.

The first mention of ankle taping among football players came in an article describing Brown and Washington State players getting taped for the 1916 Rose Bowl, from which football’s postseason effectively descends.

Ankle taping resurfaced in 1920 in several accounts from the APFA, the forerunner of the NFL. Tackle Dewey Lyle sprained his ankle during a November game with the Chicago Tigers, and, while time was out, he had his ankle taped on the field. Under the limited substitution rules of the time, injury timeouts lasted 2 minutes, allowing trainers to come onto the field for a quick tape job. Meanwhile, the Decatur Staleys credited Windy Lotshaw, their trainer, who was adept at taping ankles, knees, and shoulders, with keeping the team healthy and playing the full season. A former minor leaguer, was the Bears’ and Cubs’ trainer into the early 1950s.

Taping ankles became increasingly common in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly for preventive use. The catalog pages below show a tool for cutting elastic bandages to various widths, while Johnson & Johnson adhesive tape rolls were available in 2- and 3-inch widths.

Taping ankles was among the techniques taught to coaches at football clinics in the late 1930s, and by the 1940 season, a team like Arizona had about half its players have their ankles taped for every practice and game. The late 1930s also saw the introduction of low-cut or oxford shoes for football players, so the trend toward low-cut shoes may have also encouraged increased taping.

Ankle taping or bracing is nearly universal among players in well-resourced programs today, and it is unlikely to go away unless new shoe designs or other approaches replace it. It just shows that what goes around comes around.

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First, Goldsmith guaranteed their premium football, the No. RS, for two games before it might gain weight or become misshapen. They also touted their patented four-ply waxed linen stitching, which provided a better grip for forward passing, a skill becoming increasingly important in the game.

Notable is the line in its description:

The ball is made with small pointed ends, an aid in forward passing.

While Goldsmith’s ball complied with NCAA rules regarding ball size, they modified the ball’s ogive (its curve or slope) for teams looking to throw the ball.

Later in the 1920s, some manufacturers produced slimmer balls that violated NCAA rules, and enough coaches supported using the “bootleg” balls that the NCAA changed the football’s specs in 1929 and 1934.

Next, we move to Goldsmith’s top-of-the-line helmets, which were unusual for being reshaped to extend further down the back and along the sides of the head.

Most of Goldsmith’s helmets were still flathead and dog-eared, so Nos. 72 and 09 were a big deal in an industry reshaping its helmets.

Goldsmith also dropped the chin strap from their new models. eliminating what was actually a jaw strap rather than a chin strap. It is unclear what they gained by removing the chin strap, but Goldsmith was still selling them in 1927, so somebody bought them.

We see “Bo” McMillin in living color, along with the shoulder pad model named after him. McMillin starred for the 1921 Centre team that beat Harvard, ending the Crimson’s 25-game undefeated streak. He played for the NFL’s Milwaukee Badgers in 1923.

Their model No. 40 had a patent-pending design that leveraged foam rubber. Goldsmith was at the forefront of the trend toward lighter equipment, working with the Navy team doctor in finding new technologies to reduce the weight of football gear.

Goldsmith’s football pants also used sponge rubber to supplement felt padding. They also had built-in high kidney and hip pads, plus the cinch or drawstring system to keep their thigh pads in place.

Goldsmith’s jersey offerings were not particularly exciting. However, the friction strip model was widely copied and modified until numbers on the front of jerseys came along. The Style R horizontal stripe version resembles those worn by Centre, Army, and a few other teams.

Those of you who take the time to download the beautiful catalog might notice that I omitted the Accessories page from this story. It will “play a roll” in another story I’ll publish shortly.

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Pigskin Dispatch Podcast’s Darin Hayes and I discuss Jim Thorpe’s appearance in a terrible movie and the list of Heisman Trophy winners who dropkicked in a college or NFL game.

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The rugby rules of the 1870s were not always clear, especially for those trying to learn the game by reading the rules. The rules had no apparent order, terms were undefined, and much was open to interpretation. The combination encouraged America’s collegians to devise their own rules, clarifying their intent and preferred style of play. Still, even America’s early rules left much to the imagination.

Where to spot the ball at the end of a play is a critical issue for a game that depends on teams progressing down the field, but there was less need for precision in the 1870s before the system of downs arrived. The game was essentially rugby, so wherever the ball went out of bounds, or someone was tackled, a player would put the ball back into play or place it on the ground to start a scrimmage. It was inexact, but rugby, soccer, and American football got along just fine without today’s measurement rigidity.

For example, the 1876 Laws of Rugby, which were the feedstock of the football rules we have today, included two interrelated rules:

9. A Touch Down is when a player, putting his hand upon the ball on the ground in touch or in goal, stops it so that it remains dead or fairly so.

17. The goal-line is in goal, and the touch-line is in touch.

So, the touchline (now called a sideline) was out of bounds, and since the goal line was part of the goal area, a player had to touch the ball down behind or on the goal line to score a touchdown.

Everyone was apparently happy with those rules, but in 1882, the rules gave teams three downs to gain five yards. Suddenly, where you spotted the ball at the conclusion of a play might make the difference between a first down and turning the ball over to your opponent. Despite the apparent need for clarity on how to spot the ball, the rules continued to ignore the issue, and everyone seemed to have played the game without problems.

Another change came in 1885 when football eliminated the maul-in. Maul-ins seem crazy now, but since players had to touch the ball to the ground to score a touchdown, the defense sometimes tried to keep the ball carrier upright and push him back onto the field of play so he could not touch the ball to the ground. Those situations were maul-ins, and their dangers led to their removal from the game in 1885.

So, how did they know whether someone scored a touchdown if they no longer had to touch the ball down? I don’t have a copy of the 1885 rules, but the 1888 rules say:

Rule 4. A touch-down is made when the ball is carried, kicked, or passed across the goal line and there held.

So, the referee credited teams with a touchdown when the ball crossed the goal line and remained in their possession. What constituted crossing the goal line is unclear, and the same mushiness applied to how they spotted the ball after each play. Of course, in their fast-paced rugby-style play, the ball carrier set the ball down, the teams lined up, and the team in possession snapped the ball. The ref generally did not intervene or spot the ball unless the teams disagreed about its location, which was infrequent.

It was not until 1898 that the definition of a touchdown gained more precision with a rule stating that a touchdown occurs when the ball is on, over, or behind the goal line.

But even that led to an argument. In the late 1890s, football experienced a schism due to the Eastern rulemakers excluding other parts of the country from the rulemaking process. That led teams in the West to create their own rulebook, resulting in a few differences, including how to define a touchdown.

Amos Alonzo Stagg, a leader of the Western coaches, noted that the East considered it a touchdown when any part of the ball was on, over, or behind the goal line, whereas the Western rules based the score on the center of the ball. Stagg argued that the center of the ball made more sense, since the referee rotating the ball might make the difference between scoring or not. That may seem like a silly distinction given the error inherent in spotting the ball and locating the chains, but that was the Western position.

The Easterners stuck to the “forward-most” part of the ball approach. Still, in Walter Camp’s summary of rule changes for the 1900 season, he acknowledged the controversy about judging a touchdown and noted that the same logic now applied to spotting the ball in the field of play. The forward-most part of the ball determined the progress made on a play.

The Easterners gave in to demands for Western representation on the Rules Committee by adding Stagg in 1904. One year later, Stagg’s point about rotating the ball was adopted in the college rules, with a note stating that the referee should not rotate the ball when determining whether the offense had gained a first down.

The reign of the unrotated ball lasted until 1973, when the Rules Committee determined there was sufficient imprecision in spotting the ball and instructed officials to rotate the ball each time to ensure its long axis was parallel to the sideline. One suspects that television viewers picked up on the varying ball positions in close measurements, leading to ill feelings when a rotated or nonrotated ball favored the other team.

Either way, the 1973 rule remains in place today. The ball should always rest perpendicular to the sideline when a measurement takes place.

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Pigskin Dispatch Podcast’s Darin Hayes and I discuss when British rugby players tried convincing American footballists to play their grand game rather than the heathen alternative developing in America.

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American football had allowed the fair catch since the game began, but wind, rain, and error meant there was always the potential for fumbles when fielding punts. Despite the risk associated with fielding punts, the rules had long allowed the “onside kick or punt,” which allowed the punting team to recover and advance the ball after it hit the ground. That rule encouraged the return team to field punts, even taking risks when running up on short punts.

That logic changed in 1923, when the rulemakers eliminated the “onside punt,” so the punting team could no longer recover it. Instead, the ball could hit the ground, rolling and rolling until it stopped and was declared dead. The rule change allowed more conservative coaches to instruct their punt returners to avoid fielding risky punts. Twas better to let the ball roll and lose some field position rather than fumble and lose possession downfield. Even worse, the punt team could advance a fumbled punt, allowing for what some later called a scoop-and-score.

Punting, which was once among the most thrilling aspects of football, soon became among its most boring. Most punts ended in either a fair catch or a dead ball, which made for boring football.

That changed in 1927, when abject boredom led the rulemakers to try injecting life into the punting game. Now, punt returners who touched the ball without possessing it did not fumble; they only muffed it. A muff meant the defense could recover the ball but not advance it.

Taking that logic a step further, the Rules Committee applied it to laterals. Whether on plays behind the line of scrimmage or downfield passes followed by a lateral (the hook and lateral), they eliminated the opportunity for defenses to advance recovered fumbles.

Perhaps mirroring the NFL, the NCAA changed its rules in 1989 to allow defenses to advance fumbles, but not fumbled laterals, that occurred behind the neutral zone. All fumbles, including laterals, were subject to advance by the defense in 1998.

Muffed punts still cannot be advanced by the kicking team.

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Nevertheless, three contenders are often cited as the pioneers of gridiron head protection. They are:

James Naismith, basketball's inventor, played football for Springfield College in 1891, when a picture was taken of him snapping the ball while wearing ear pads kept in place with a flannel wrap. Some claim he began wearing his wrap while playing Canadian Rugby at McGill, but he clearly wore it by 1891.

Joseph Reeves, Navy’s captain in 1893, was advised to quit football due to repeated head injuries, but chose to play wearing a dome-like device of unknown construction.

George Barclay, a freshman at Lafayette in 1894, protected his ears with a head harness that looked much like modern wrestling headgear. The device’s leather straps also protected other parts of his head against minor bumps and bruises. (Barclay played for Bucknell in 1893, and there is no evidence he wore a head harness there.)

While I and many others cited those three in the past, it now appears that another player preceded Barclay as the developer of the head harness, based on photographic evidence of one (or two) headgear worn at West Point the previous year. I learned of the new contender a few years ago when John Gennantonio posted images of Army’s 1893 team on a football collectors’ message board. He pointed out the pictured headgear, but could not identify which players wore the headgear.

We can date both pictures to 1893 since Laurie Bliss, the former Yale star, appears in both pictures during his only year coaching on The Plain.

The first image shows the mustachioed and cap-wearing Bliss watching his team calling signals (aka running a play against air).

On the right side of the image is an unknown player wearing what appears to be a leather football helmet. Unfortunately, the image quality is not ideal, so it is difficult to confirm exactly what sits atop his head.

The second image is Army’s 1893 team picture, which includes a player lying on the ground wearing a head harness. A close-up shows the player has a head harness similar to that worn by Barclay and his Lafayette teammates the following year.

Unfortunately, the team picture did not identify the players, so we did not know the name of the head harness guy. I did not pursue it at the time, but I’m now writing a book on the history of football uniforms and equipment, so I returned to my notes on early football headgear and hit the research salt mine, hoping to find something new.

I may have missed Army’s head harness guy again, but while researching Navy’s Joseph Reeves, I found an article previewing the 1893 Army-Navy game. Newspapers of the time could not print photographs cost-effectively, so they often had artists create line drawings from photographs and printed the line drawing rather than the photograph. The Army-Navy preview article included line drawings of both teams, and luckily, the Army drawing was based on the team picture shown above. Better yet, it listed everyone’s surname, so it was quick work to determine that the head harness guy was Ralph W. Drury, then a West Point plebe.

Back then, some young men pursued service academy appointments after spending a year or two at another college, and Drury was one of them. A native of Athol, Massachusetts, he attended UMass for two years, playing on the freshmen class football team in 1891 and the 1892 varsity team as a sophomore left end.

After his appointment to West Point, Drury joined the football team, starting at left end early in the 1893 season, and was on the 28-man travel squad to Annapolis, where he may have played against Joseph Reeves, of dome-like headgear fame. He started at right end in 1894, before being dismissed from West Point in the spring of 1895 for academic reasons.

Since we are entering a weekend honoring those who gave their lives while serving this country, I’ll point out that Drury lived a good, long life, but he put his life on the line. After being dismissed from West Point, Drury taught school and clerked in his hometown, but his desire to be a soldier remained, leading him to enlist as a private in 1901. Promoted to corporal in 1902, he earned his commission in 1908. After working under John Pershing in 1914, he served with the 2nd Division in France during WWI. During fighting at Chateau-Thierry in July 1918, he directed others and personally rescued wounded soldiers while being shelled. Drury was awarded a Silver Star for that action, and he also earned two Purple Hearts during the war. Drury retired from the Army in 1922 and returned to his hometown in Massachusetts.

To my knowledge, Drury’s contribution to football’s early use of protective headgear has gone unrecognized previously, though he wore a head harness the year before Barclay. Since the strap version of head harnesses was the primary form of noggin protection before full head covering versions arrived in the late 1890s, I’m putting my money on Drury for the time being.

Thanks to John Gennantonio for sharing the West Point images with all of us.

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Pigskin Dispatch Podcast’s Darin Hayes and I discuss why the 1905 Army-Navy game moved from Philadelphia to Princeton, why it returned in 1906, and what became of two key decision makers.

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The larger field and three downs per possession rule make Canadian football more wide-open than the American game. The waggle, which allows receivers to run toward the line of scrimmage at the snap, also takes getting used to, but otherwise, the core of the game is football like that played south of the border.

Still, there are other rules differences, especially in the kicking game, that are noteworthy and fun, though most kicking game differences seldom come into play. The most visible difference in the kicking games and one of my favorite elements of Canadian football is that kicked balls remain live in more situations than in the American game, and a combination of interconnected rules strongly encourages the return team to field punts and kicks, and return them.

One of those rules is that Canada does not recognize the fair catch. You might think the absence of the fair catch would put punt and kick returners’ lives in danger, but coverage teams cannot penetrate a 5-yard circle around the returner while he makes the catch. The “No Yards” rule results in many more exciting punt returns per game.

Canadian football also does not have touchbacks. Balls kicked into or intercepted in the end zone need to be run or punted out of the end zone to avoid a rouge. (During live play following a change of possession, players can punt the ball back to the other team, a remnant of rugby that became illegal in American college football in the 1960s after being little used for decades.)

Canadian teams do not always run punts and kicks out of the end zone. For field position reasons, they often concede one point and then receive the ball from scrimmage at the 40-yard line, rather than deep in their territory, when an attempted run gains little ground.

Likewise, the ball remains live when kicked into the 20-yard deep end zones (aka goal areas). Failing to bring the ball out of the end zone results in a rouge, or one point for the kicking team. Punted or kicked balls that exit the side or back of the end zone have traditionally resulted in a rouge, but the CFL has changed that rule for the 2026 season. Now, only kicked balls that stay in the end zone result in a rouge.

Another Canadian rule allows open-field or downfield punts, such as a pass receiver punting the ball further downfield after a catch. Canada also allows onside/dribble kicks, meaning that the punter or kicker and any teammates behind them at the instant of the kick can recover the ball for a first down. (American football had similar rules until the early 1920s.)

Yet another difference in kicking rules comes on missed field goals. In American football, you can return missed field goals or allow the ball to roll dead in the end zone or on the field of play, with the next play starting on the 20-yard line or at the previous spot.

In Canada, the ball remains live on missed field goals, and the kicker or anyone behind him at the time of the kick, which normally includes only the holder, can recover the ball. The rule effectively forces the “receiving” team to return missed field goals.

Most teams attempt field goals only when their field position gives them a reasonable chance to make the attempted field goal. However, there was that one time...

When the Toronto Argonauts visited the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the second-to-last game of the 1991 season, the Argonauts’ regular long snapper, J. P. Darche, was left in Toronto due to injury, so linebacker Chad Folks handled the snapping duties until he suffered a third-quarter knee injury. That left the Argos with linebacker and third-string snapper, Mike O’Shea, who could handle the short snaps for field goal attempts but not the long snaps to a punter. (O’Shea has been Winnipeg’s head coach since 2014.)

For the remainder of the game, every time Toronto was in a punting situation, they had O’Shea snap to Dan Giancola, the regular field goal kicker, who held the ball for Noel Prefontaine, the regular punter. The arrangement made sense since Prefontaine was also their kickoff specialist, whose powerful leg was less accurate than Giancola’s.

The Argos lined up in field goal formation five times during the remainder of the game as Prefontaine attempted field goals from 80, 104, 75, and 71 yards out, plus he punted once from field goal formation. (The 104-yard attempt comes shortly after the 1:00 mark). Winnipeg returned all five kicks and made solid yardage on most.

For each of the five kicking situations, the following video shows the second down play preceding the field goal attempts or punt, and the kicking play and return. The video also shows an exciting last play of the game.

Since American goal posts are on the end line, someone could conceivably attempt a 104-yard field goal from the team’s 6-yard line. However, because American rules return missed field goals to the 20-yard line when inside the 20 or to the previous spot when outside the 20, American teams generally do not attempt long field goals that are unlikely to be made. They likely would find other solutions to the missing long snapper problem, such as attempting a rugby-style punt off a shorter snap or a forward pass.

What would you do under similar circumstances when playing under American rules?

Thanks to Nate Sager for alerting me to this game and situation. I appeared on Nathan’s podcast a few months ago. You can listen here:

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Looking back, however, one of his more interesting pieces was a 1921 story for the Brooklyn Eagle:

The article tells the history of the Crescent Athletic Club and its football team, which started in 1884. The article ends in a plea, or at least proposes the idea, that someone reconstitute the Crescent team so guys could play competitive football after their college graduation.

The football world was different in 1921. College football dominated. The NFL was a handful of minor league guys trying to elevate the semi-pro game to the pro level. They became a massive success, but in 1921, they were nothing.

As an East Coaster, Danzig could not have conceived of professional football overtaking the college game. However, he recognized that post-college teams would fill player and fan needs, so why not restart the Crescents football team?

The article goes on to describe the club’s history, how the Crescent team formed in 1884, largely composed of former Yale, Princeton, and other college players. They had so much fun that they continued playing, later formalizing the group by creating the Crescent Athletic Club in Brooklyn in 1887.

During the 1880s, the team included many former Yale, Princeton, and other college stars, including Alex Moffat, Wyllis Terry, Duncan Edwards, Phil King, Billy Bull, Harry Beecher, George Foster Stanford, and the Lamarche brothers of Seton Hall. They regularly played and lost to Yale and Princeton, but did very well against other colleges and other club teams. Their top game of the year came against the Orange Athletic Club of Orange, New Jersey, whose roster included Pa Corbin, A. A. Stagg, Lee McClung, George Woodruff, Pudge Heffelfinger, Charley Gill, and others. Despite the tough competition with Orange AC, the team won the American Football Union championship from 1887 to 1892.

Some readers will recall my covering the Crescent Athletic Club in the past, since they were the first or second team known to have used down markers, even if Penn invented them.

As the linked story details, after coming across a story which made the Crescents the earliest users of chains I had found, I declared them to be its inventor. Later, I found sources indicating that the Crescents played Penn two weeks earlier, and Crescent picked up the down markers from George Woodruff, Penn’s coach.

So, maybe they weren’t the first to mark down with chains, but, so far, I believe they were the first-timers for another element of today’s football. Scroll up and look at the Crescent team images, and particularly the team captain, William H. Ford. Notice anything different about him? How about the 1889 team image? I think it’s the logos.

Until someone provides an earlier example -which could well occur- I’ll stake the claim that Crescent AC was the first football team to display a non-alphabetic logo on its uniform. The 1876 Yale team had large Ys on their jerseys, so letters were there from the beginning, but the crescent found on Ford’s jersey is the earliest non-alphabetic logo I have seen.

Given the role that non-alphabetic logos play in sports and sports marketing today, that seems like an interesting moment in the game’s history.

Please comment below about earlier logos in football or other sports.

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Instead of covering the exploits of the Bud Grants, Joe Theismans, Warren Moons, or other imports, this story honors our latitudinally-enhanced neighbors who played Canadian high school football and went pro in fields other than the exceptionally large gridirons they toiled on during their school days. And, since they played three-down football, we’ll cover three of Canada’s native sons today, leaving others for future stories.

If You Could Read My Defense

Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot penned several #1 hits in the 1960s and 1970s, some of which became famous when sung by other artists, though most we heard in his voice. If You Could Read My Mind (1970), Sundown (1974), and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (1976) were among his top hits.

Others have noted that Lightfoot played high school football at Orillia District Collegiate and Vocational Institute (ODCVI), which sits 100 miles north of Toronto. Supposedly, he played nose guard, though I could not find any period documentation of his gridiron career. I did find a profile from his high school yearbook and an image showing him on the high school track team.

What a Long Strange Trek its Been

Before William Shatner became famous for boldly going where no man had gone until Captain James T. Kirk explored strange new worlds, he was Bill Shatner at West Hills High in Montreal.

Shatner’s high school had two football teams, an A team and a B team, and he played on the B team, which suggests he was a lesser player.

Despite limited high school success, he mentioned in a 2016 interview that he also played football during his early days at McGill University. His McGill senior bio mentions only his participation in intramural sports.

Still, the guy in the middle of the top row of McGill’s 1949 intermediate (JV) football team sure looks like a young Shatner.

Uncle Buck Sweep

Last, but certainly not least, is John Candy, who grew up in the Toronto suburbs as an Argonauts fan. Always a big fella, he started playing football while attending Neil McNeil High, where he was the student council treasurer and starting left tackle until a knee injury ended his playing career.

Candy’s passion for football and his hometown Argos was reignited in 1991 when he partnered with Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky, by buying a minority ownership in the Argonauts. That year, the team signed Rocket Ishmael to a contract and won the Grey Cup, with Ishmael being the game’s MVP. The video below is a tribute to Candy and the 1991 Argonauts season.

If you have not done so yet, bookmark the cfl.ca/plus link and give the old game a try this season. You’ll see another CFL-themed story on Sunday.

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When Bernier took the Virginia Tech job before the 1917 season, Crisp followed him there, earning four football letters, three in basketball, and one in track.

On the football field, he played tackle as a sophomore and fullback as a junior, and was named the South Atlantic conference MVP when he led his team in scoring as a runner and kicker.

He started his senior season at quarterback, and, after one too many fumbles, he returned to the line and earned all-conference honors at guard.

After Charlie Bernier became Alabama’s athletic director, he hired Crisp as Bama’s track coach, a position he held from 1921 to 1927. He also became the football line coach in 1921 and the head basketball coach in 1924, where he won two-thirds of his games through 1942, and again from 1945 to 1946. Plus, he was Bama’s AD for two stints spanning 15 years.

Despite his success with basketball, we’ll focus on his role in football, since he became a core part of Alabama football under head coaches Xen Scott, Wallace Wade, Frank Thomas, Red Drew, and J.B. Whitworth. During that time, the Crimson Tide played in six Rose Bowls, two Cotton Bowls, and one Orange Bowl.

Following the 1930 season, Crisp went on a recruiting trip to offer scholarships to a pair of teammates at Arkansas state champion Fordyce High. While there, he spotted a third player and offered him on the spot. The third player, Paul “Bear” Bryant, gained some fame himself at Alabama over the years.

Crisp often acted as the trainer for his teams, and was said to be a keen diagnostician, but he was also tough as nails and demanding on the field. Jim Whatley, an All-SEC tackle in 1935, told of being poked in the eye during a game at Georgia, leading Whatley to walk in circles, moaning. When Crisp reached Whatley, he asked what was wrong, and Whatley said, “I can’t see out of my right eye.”

Crisp responded, “Well, what the hell is wrong with your left eye?”

Crisp left Alabama during WWII, serving as a civilian assistant football coach at Georgia Pre-Flight, when they beat Alabama 35-19 in 1942. He coached in the AAFC in 1946, then for a few years at Tulane, before returning to his old roles as Bama’s line coach and AD through the 1957 season.

Despite decades of highlights, life had a final, unfortunate surprise for Crisp. In January 1970, he was selected for the Alabama Football Hall of Fame for his role as an assistant coach at the university. While attending a reception shortly before the ceremony, Crisp suffered a massive heart attack and passed away.

In a final show of family toughness after Crisp passed, his son left the hospital, returned to the ceremony, and accepted the Hall of Fame plaque in his father’s name.

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Pigskin Dispatch Podcast’s Darin Hayes and I discuss how the markings on football fields changed over time, particularly the numbers that identify the locations on the field.

Watch or listen to the podcast here or on other podcast feeds. You can read the original Tidbit below.

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Beyond his excellent work in the activities we expect of coaches, he inspired others after the right-handed Owen lost that arm following a midseason hunting accident in 1907. He continued as Oklahoma’s football, basketball, and baseball coach despite missing an arm, but his coaching depended more on his brain than on the rest of his body.

While Owen is rightfully praised for his performance, others succeeded on the gridiron as players despite losing a limb. One of these was Eugene “Guy” Neely, who was named a first-team All-American while playing left guard for Dartmouth.

Born in Comanche, Texas, a hunting accident at age 15 led to the loss of his right arm above the elbow. Despite the accident, he played baseball and football as a junior and senior at Terrill School for Boys, making a name for himself on the gridiron and in the classroom.

Neely entered Dartmouth in the fall of 1915, and he quickly established himself as the top freshmen lineman, so the Hanoverians focused on his on-the-field production rather than whatever might be missing from his game or body.

Still, word circulated that Dartmouth had a one-armed freshman football player, and while Neely gained a few headlines, many newspapers then and for several years after mentioned Neely in articles about local players missing arms or hands.

Neely started as a sophomore, gaining recognition for his play, and, of course, his deficit, especially after intercepting a pass and blocking a kick versus West Virginia.

Despite the attention on his missing arm, Neely excelled on the field as a junior, earning first-team All-American status on Bill Veiock and the New York Tribune’s teams.

Neely did not play in 1918, his senior season, when many U.S. colleges did not field varsity teams. Instead, with most college campuses effectively taken over by the U.S. Army, Dartmouth fielded an SATC (Student Army Training Corps) team. Athletes missing the better part of an arm, neither qualified for the Army nor an SATC team, led Neely to work as an assistant coach with the football team at Camp Dix in New Jersey.

Neely spent the 1919 season at his high school alma mater, the Terrill School, where he led them to an undefeated season.

After coaching at Terrill, Neely entered the oil business while coaching Austin College to a 5-4 record in 1921. He later pursued a career in the securities business before passing away at age 53 in 1949, making him the only known major college All-American football player to play while missing an arm.

In the next day or two, we’ll look at another football player of the same era, Hank Crisp, who succeeded in multiple sports despite losing a hand before his college career began.

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Pre-1910 yearbooks had few unposed images and lower-quality photographs and printing, so all the images shown are from 1911 to 1953. Still, along the way, I’ve come across some great images that few people have seen in the last 50 or 100 years. So, yesterday and today, I’m publishing some of these forgotten images for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks the the anonymous reader who bought me 10 coffees yesterday and left a very nice note.

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